President Donald Trump has come under withering criticism for allowing the Obama-era New START nuclear pact with Russia to expire. But he was right to do so. Instead of preserving antiquated limits, Trump needs to act unilaterally to modernize America’s nuclear deterrent. There’s a model for how to do it.
In April 2002, I traveled to Moscow with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for negotiations on the Moscow Treaty, the predecessor to New START. Instead of engaging in long, adversarial negotiations, Rumsfeld simply informed the Russians that the United States had, after careful review, determined the nuclear force levels that it needed to achieve to defend itself, its interests and its allies. The U.S. would adopt those force levels regardless of what Russia did with its own arsenal. America would be happy to codify these levels in an arms control agreement, Rumsfeld said, if Russia really wanted one, or the George W. Bush administration could enact them unilaterally.
The Russians were taken aback. They wanted a treaty. So, the administration gave them one. The resulting agreement was just three pages long.
This was the right approach — then and now. The United States should look at the national security landscape that exists today and determine on its own what nuclear force levels are necessary to deter its adversaries and meet its national security imperatives.
The world has changed dramatically since both the Moscow Treaty and New START were negotiated. Russia has reverted to its Soviet-era expansionism, invading Ukraine in 2014 under President Barack Obama and then again in 2022 under President Joe Biden. As Vladimir Putin has waged war against his neighbors, he has been carrying out a massive nuclear modernization program — including the development of new intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying multiple warheads, and new intercontinental nuclear-powered torpedoes and cruise missiles that were, by Russian design, not subject to the limitations of the New START pact.
Moreover, as my American Enterprise Institute colleague Kyle Balzer points out, today “for the first time in the nuclear age, Washington faces not one but two nuclear-peer competitors — adversaries with arsenals comparable to America’s.” No longer satisfied with fielding a rudimentary nuclear force, China is making a mad dash to join the U.S. and Russia as a nuclear superpower. Beijing has tripled its stockpile of nuclear warheads and increased its ICBM force by more than 500 percent. By 2035, Beijing’s arsenal of deployed nuclear weapons is expected to match or exceed that of the United States.
What’s worse is that America’s two nuclear adversaries have entered into a “no limits” partnership — as well as a de facto alliance with a nuclear North Korea and an aspiring nuclear power in Iran.
Given these realities, it would have been pointless to extend a bilateral treaty that did not restrain China and which Russia was no longer observing anyway. It was Putin who suspended compliance with New START in 2022 — the same year he invaded Ukraine.
The United States’ national security imperative now is not to try to negotiate restraint with Russia, a country committing naked aggression and threatening to use nuclear weapons against those who push back. Rather, it is to ensure that America is capable of deterring multiple nuclear adversaries at once, while preventing new ones from emerging.
This will require nuclear modernization, including investments in next-generation nuclear systems and possibly a resumption of testing. It will require loading additional warheads on existing land- and sea-based strategic missiles, forward-stationing nuclear-capable aircraft in Europe and the Pacific, growing the planned fleet of strategic missile submarines and expanding the next-generation B-21 bomber program.
It will also necessitate new investments in missile defense — including Trump’s “Golden Dome” defense shield to fulfill the vision Ronald Reagan put forward with his Strategic Defense Initiative to protect the United States from ballistic missile attack, as well as dramatically increasing the scale and pace of production of theater ballistic missile defense interceptors. It will require acting decisively to stop Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon — ideally by ending the Iranian regime. All of this must be funded by raising the U.S. defense budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, as Trump recently announced.
So the Pentagon should undertake a new Nuclear Posture Review to determine the appropriate nuclear force levels to deal with a new multipolar nuclear security environment. Then, if appropriate, President Trump can offer to record those changes in a treaty with Russia and China, or he can simply make them unilaterally. It really doesn’t matter. Because ultimately, the security of the free world does not depend on a piece of parchment. It depends on the United States wielding a credible nuclear deterrent.
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